i7-2600K build: Overclocking: GPU Unlock/OC

[DrBoss]

+++UPDATE 03.08.18, Proceed to Post #90, Page 4+++
+++UPDATE 09.12.11, Proceed to Post #84, Page 4+++

BEGIN OP (From Months Ago)
Well then, straight to it. I've build my last 4 computers and always been fortunate to seat the heatsink without issue... until now. I started assembly of my new system today and unfortunately the CPU idle temp is hovering around 40 degrees C.

System Specs are as follows:

GPU
2x MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III Power Edition

CPU
Intel Core i7-2600K

HEATSINK
Thermalright Archon CPU Heatsink

THERMAL PASTE
Shin-Etsu X23-7783D

MOBO
ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3

RAM
8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 V1.5

PSU
Corsair 850HX power supply

SSD
Intel X25-M 160GB SSD

HDD
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA 6.0Gb/s

AUDIO
HT Omega eClaro 7.1 PCIe

MEDIA
Pioneer BDR-206

CASE
Fractal Design Define XL (Black)

FANS
2x Thermalright TY-140 - mounted to cpu heatsink (push-pull)
3x Thermalright Silent-X 140mm - (2) intake at front of case, (1) rear case exhaust
1x Thermalright Silent-X 120mm - intake at front of case
1x Fractal Design 180mm - diagonally mounted rear case exhaust





It is my assumption that the high idle temps result from an incorrect application of Shin-Etsu thermal compound. I have yet to come across the one, sure, absolute, undeniable, totally obvious way to apply thermal compound. Mixed reviews, and mixed guides only further my confusion on the subject. In the past i've simply put a small dollup of paste in the center of the die, tightened the heatsink... and done.

Too bad i didn't do that this time. After reading a few reviews on the thickness of X23-7783D i opted to attempt the "X" line application. I would estimate i placed 1.5 times the paste that i normally would have using the single dollup (dot) technique. Nonetheless, my CPU idle temps hover around 40C... which is unfortunate considering it is my intention to push the 2600k towards 5ghz. [the 40C temperature reading was measured in both the ASUS bios and using CoreTemp once loading Windows 7. And just to clarify, thats 40C without any overclock - default bios settings] Also, it should be noted that with the heatsink securely tightened to the mounting plate i am still able to slight twist/rotate it if i apply force (the heatsink does not move at all on its own). I estimate i can rotate it 2 or 3 degrees off of center. Is this normal?

I have yet to stress the system to see what load temps are considering i figured it best to go ahead and get some advice on the issue. It seems i need to remove the heatsink, clean the existing thermal compound, reapply, and reset the heatsink. This is unknown waters for me; i've never removed a heatsink or cleaned paste from the die. I've look a few guides and youtube videos on the subject... but then again, i also watched a few of those when i attempted the "X" line paste application.

With that in mind, i would really appreciate any advice or info on how best to clean thermal compound from the cpu... as well as advice on how to reapply the compound. The Thermalright instructions stated that thermal compound should be applied to both the cpu and the bottom of the heatsink. I neglected to do this considering it seemed excessive. Perhaps i am mistaken. I've also read a fair amount on spreading the compound across the cpu prior to installing the heatsink... is this the way to go?

Tomorrow after work (Tuesday 7pm EST) i will begin the process of stress testing the cpu to observe load temperatures. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Heartbreak aside, the rest of the build has been quite rewarding.
-The Intel X25-M 160GB (my first SSD) is pretty amazing. I've never had a system boot so quickly

-The dual MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III's currently idle between 38 and 40C. I have yet to push them, but i hope heat is not an issue. I feel pretty confident, the layout and fan configuration should keep temps reasonable.

-The Fractal Design case is solid, with everything installed the assembly weighs quite a bit, which i like. More importantly, the case in conjuction with the fans is quite. Unless i crank GPU fan speed over 50% i hear nothing. As illustrated in the picture above, there is certainly adequate cable management.

-The Sabertooth bios is unlike anything i've used. Granted, i'm graduating from a e6600 conroe system... but still, bios have come a long way.




One last thing: I've propped up the lower GPU using a 1/4" cube of rigid foam, however; the higher GPU is unsupported. Should i be worried about the GPU sag?

Thanks in advance
.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Quite a build. Nice rig. First, I would get some Arctic Silver in preference to what you have. Alcohol and some cotton swabs should clean that stuff up.

Also, I have never considered it a good idea to apply goop to both the HSF and CPU. Also, I am not familiar with your HSF in any case; it does not appear to be one of the consensus choices for this type of build. Lots of people use the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ to good effect, and there are other good ones that perform very well with both Core i7 and SB - like the Prolimatech Megahalems. I think that the Thermalright is your problem. You will not reach even 4.7 with that.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

Everything looks very sexy. I hope you have fun with your new rig!

 

[BD231]

Just as the cpu surface has imperfections so does the bottom of your heat sink, definitely put a thin layer on the sink as well. GPU or CPU a layer on both sides has never failed me.

 

[Ben90]

Just as the cpu surface has imperfections so does the bottom of your heat sink, definitely put a thin layer on the sink as well. GPU or CPU a layer on both sides has never failed me.

If I (CPU) pee on myself, you (Heatsink) will get wet if I hug you.

 

[Ado6]

I don't see that it was mentioned or asked by anyone else, but what is your ambient/room temp? If you're in a warm room idle will be higher of course. Also, why don't you run Intel Burn Test, AIDA64 Stability test or Prime95 to see what your load temps are? That would also help the members on the board with providing feedback and help with your issue.

As for applying the Thermal Paste, I used the X method on my chip and haven't really had any issues. I wouldn't recommend to put paste on the hsf and cpu, one or the other. The Idle temps would be related to the type of cooler you have. You should turn the CPU Fans on 100% and see what that does to temps. I run my CPU/HSF fans on 100% 24/7, don't hear the fans and temps are great.

This video might help you with picking a method. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyXLu1Ms-q4

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

To change the title typo, go to advanced edit.

 

[DrBoss]

I don't see that it was mentioned or asked by anyone else, but what is your ambient/room temp? If you're in a warm room idle will be higher of course. Also, why don't you run Intel Burn Test, AIDA64 Stability test or Prime95 to see what your load temps are? That would also help the members on the board with providing feedback and help

Ambient room temp is around 22C (72F).

After creating this thread i read in a few locations that it is load temps that are really what matter. That in mind, i do plan to run some stress test before i go to the effort of removing and reinstalling the heatsink.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Try LinX, and make sure you right click and run it as administrator.

 

[DrBoss]

To change the title typo, go to advanced edit.

thanks

 

[Termie]

i7 2600k build: Running hot.


[/U]Heartbreak aside, the rest of the build has been quite rewarding.
-The Intel X25-M 160GB (my first SSD) is pretty amazing. I've never had a system boot so quickly

.

Woo-hoo, I told ya so!!!

Quite a build. Nice rig. First, I would get some Arctic Silver in preference to what you have. Alcohol and some cotton swabs should clean that stuff up.

Also, I have never considered it a good idea to apply goop to both the HSF and CPU. Also, I am not familiar with your HSF in any case; it does not appear to be one of the consensus choices for this type of build. Lots of people use the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ to good effect, and there are other good ones that perform very well with both Core i7 and SB - like the Prolimatech Megahalems. I think that the Thermalright is your problem. You will not reach even 4.7 with that.

Correct on alcohol and cotton swabs - but incorrect on AS5 and the HSF.

AS5's "dominance" has been completely debunked: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/thermal-interface-roundup-1_12.html#sect0

And the Archon is basically the best air cooler in the world: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/co...ster-120-zerotherm-zt10d-premium_5.html#sect0

I don't see that it was mentioned or asked by anyone else, but what is your ambient/room temp? If you're in a warm room idle will be higher of course. Also, why don't you run Intel Burn Test, AIDA64 Stability test or Prime95 to see what your load temps are? That would also help the members on the board with providing feedback and help with your issue.

This. You haven't even tried loading the CPU. Why worry - there are at least 2 other threads on this forum from people freaking out about their SB idle temps who had prime load temps of 50C. You guys are all crazy (I mean that in the best way!).

Example: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2153422


I think the temp monitors on these chips must be different than those used before. Don't worry about your idle temps until you tell us what your load temps are.

P.S. Sweet build. Now go enjoy it!

 

[DrBoss]

Woo-hoo, I told ya so!!!

Thanks again for the advice on that. The system would have been lacking without it.

I will stress the build tonight.

One other thing i noticed in the bios was that the Vcore seemed to be jumping around. I can't remember what the range of voltages were, but it seems odd that it would move at all while in the bios (when next to nothing is being processes). Perhaps the mobo default settings are less than optimal, ie higher voltage to the chip than is necessary.

 

[Termie]

Thanks again for the advice on that. The system would have been lacking without it.

I will stress the build tonight.

One other thing i noticed in the bios was that the Vcore seemed to be jumping around. I can't remember what the range of voltages were, but it seems odd that it would move at all while in the bios (when next to nothing is being processes). Perhaps the mobo default settings are less than optimal, ie higher voltage to the chip than is necessary.

Here's another thread on SB idle temps: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2154686.

Don't know about the jumping voltages...again, maybe an SB thing.

 

[tweakboy]

Neat, you got the B3 revision. Nice rig brother!

 

[Majic 7]

The vcore voltage jumping around is normal. I have EIST and C1E enabled and my voltage idling goes from about .8 to 1.0. I also have Turbo enabled and that makes it jump around even doing nothing. My idle temps with a Noctua 12P are around 33 to 35. Stressed is about 60 to 65. Do the fans on your video cards blow most of the air out the back? Or does the second fan blow any air into your case? That might account for the slightly higher than normal temps.

 

[DrBoss]

The vcore voltage jumping around is normal. I have EIST and C1E enabled and my voltage idling goes from about .8 to 1.0. I also have Turbo enabled and that makes it jump around even doing nothing. My idle temps with a Noctua 12P are around 33 to 35. Stressed is about 60 to 65. Do the fans on your video cards blow most of the air out the back? Or does the second fan blow any air into your case? That might account for the slightly higher than normal temps.

The MSI Twin Frozr III exhaust air out of the case as well as releasing some exhaust into the case. The 40C idle temp of the CPU is without any significant load on the gpu's so i can't imagine that are contributing much to the situation... yet.

 

[Termie]

The MSI Twin Frozr III exhaust air out of the case as well as releasing some exhaust into the case. The 40C idle temp of the CPU is without any significant load on the gpu's so i can't imagine that are contributing much to the situation... yet.

Actually, this could have something to do with it. You have two video cards idling at 40C, and most of that air is being dumped into the case. That combined with SB's generally high idle temp could be the answer.

Here are some numbers from an original SB review: http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...2500k-core-i7-2600k-processors-review-20.html. Rumor has it that the new B3 motherboard stepping showed higher idle temps for some reason. You might still take a look at load temps in this article to know if you're in the ball park. As other users have reported, with an aftermarket cooler, you should be around 50C.

 

[Slammy1]

I have the CM 212 and was very concerned about the amount of paste that I used. I used AS Ceramique on the bottom pipes and the enclosed paste to spread on the plate using the 2 parallel line approach. After spreading, I couldn't resist removal and found that I had not fully spread so I applied another line. So much for the days of apply a grain of rice and wiggle. I probably read a dozen ways to apply it. They recommended about 1.5x what I would have thought, I ended up using twice as much.

 

[tweakboy]

The vcore voltage jumping around is normal. I have EIST and C1E enabled and my voltage idling goes from about .8 to 1.0. I also have Turbo enabled and that makes it jump around even doing nothing. My idle temps with a Noctua 12P are around 33 to 35. Stressed is about 60 to 65. Do the fans on your video cards blow most of the air out the back? Or does the second fan blow any air into your case? That might account for the slightly higher than normal temps.

Unless you use a pencil volt mod

turn off everything there in CPU config, speedstep to C1E , which underclocks your rig which we dont want.

Turn off C1E that si the culpirt , it downclocks you dont want that. Also if you see Intel Speedstep , turn that off. gl

 

[DrBoss]

i hope i don't have to re-seat the heatsink considering it will require a fair amount of dis-assembly and zip-tie cutting. alcohol and cotton swabs... sounds messy.

 

[Zap]

turn off everything there in CPU config, speedstep to C1E , which underclocks your rig which we dont want.

Turn off C1E that si the culpirt , it downclocks you dont want that. Also if you see Intel Speedstep , turn that off. gl

Turning off all the power management will get it to idle at higher temperatures.

 

[Termie]

i hope i don't have to re-seat the heatsink considering it will require a fair amount of dis-assembly and zip-tie cutting. alcohol and cotton swabs... sounds messy.

Removing TIM is pretty easy, but again, I think your heatsink is ok - that movement you're getting is fine as long as it's applying sufficient pressure on the CPU's heat spreader.

By the way, unless you're going for extreme overclocks, you don't need to disable power-saving features. Tweakboy's advice might be a little out-of-date.

 

[DrBoss]

Removing TIM is pretty easy, but again, I think your heatsink is ok - that movement you're getting is fine as long as it's applying sufficient pressure on the CPU's heat spreader.

By the way, unless you're going for extreme overclocks, you don't need to disable power-saving features. Tweakboy's advice might be a little out-of-date.

I am not looking for an extreme OC. I don't intend to disable power saving features or hyperthreading, etc. I would, however; like 4.6ghz stable. We shall see.

At this point i am just anxious to measure cpu load temps when i get home from work... operating on 3 hours of sleep last night isn't helping the work day pass any quicker.

 

[Blitz1776]

Great Rig overall DrBoss, I hate to ask you the obvious question, but are you sure your running a push pull setup and not a push push setup. If the mount & tim is good that would probably be the culprit, unless your case isn't moving air correctly (doubt it considering the fractal case is really good).

 

[DrBoss]

Time for an update

The idle temp issue still has me scratching my head... Using Core Temp and Real Temp the idle is not consistent. It jumps around between 26C and 40C (similarly to how the Vcore jumps around inside the ASUS bios). I don't understand how at one second the core can be 26C and then a second later be 40C... regardless, under load the temps are consistent and well within tolerances.

With a quick overclock, 40x Multiplier, 1.2 Vcore i posted the following results in Prime 95.



It ran for an hour stable before i got bored and decided to start this post (and format hard-drives in the background).

100% LOAD - after 30 minutes of Prime95
Core 0: 46C
Core 1: 51C
Core 2: 51C
Core 3: 54C

Seems reasonable/good for an unoptimized 4Ghz OC

Despite jumping around on me, i have noticed the idle temps have lowered slightly over the last few hours. The lowest readings ive seen at idle have been.

IDLE
Core 0: 26C
Core 1: 29C
Core 2: 27C
Core 3: 30C

I've also briefly spent some time putting the GPU's through their paces with Crysis.
At 65% fan speed on both GPU's (which is barely audible) the highest temperature i've seen is 54C.

I am new to Crossfire, and assume i am doing something wrong considering the results below.

I benchmarked using CrysisBenchmarkTool v1.05
3 runs on the ASSAULT_HARBOR level
64Bit, DX10, all settings @ VERY HIGH, 1920x1200, 8xAA

Results are as follows:

With Crossfire DISABLED (only 1 GPU)
Pass 1: 25.27 MIN - 45.47 MAX - 34.57 AVG
Pass 2: 25.27 MIN - 46.23 MAX - 35.95 AVG
Pass 3: 25.27 MIN - 46.23 MAX - 35.69 AVG

GPU1 temp at end of test, 54C

With Crossfire ENABLED
Pass 1: 23.33 MIN - 59.92 MAX - 44.95 AVG
Pass 2: 23.33 MIN - 59.92 MAX - 40.18 AVG
Pass 3: 23.33 MIN - 60.97 MAX - 45.36 AVG

GPU1 temp at end of test, 52C
GPU2 temp at end of test, 47C

Needless to say, the Crossfire results are lackluster. Crysis is not scaling well well in crossfire. I am running Catalyst 11.3, and Crysis has been patched to version 1.2. Perhaps there are some .cfg command lines that can improve performance?

During the Crossfire benchmark the game ran at 70, 80, at times 100 fps.. and then it randomly bog down to 25fps for a few seconds (this happened 3 or 4 times during each test).

Am i missing something? Is there something i need to do to configure Crossfire?
Any help is appreciated.

Thanks for reading.